For mere information om projektet, kontakt projektleder Signe Skov-Hansen, Teknologisk Institut.
Sæt kryds i kalenderen den 14. marts 2011 og deltag i årets lærende konference:
Nye innovationsformer i mindre virksomheder
Co-creation - Åben innovation - Brugerdreven innovation
Dagen veksler mellem oplæg fra innovationseksperter og innovationspraktikere, workshops hvor deltagerne indgår som aktive brugere samt refleksion og videndeling i grupper og i plenum.
Konferencen henvender sig til alle, som interesserer sig for innovation og produktudvikling. Vi har inviteret innovationspraktikere fra små og store virksomheder, viden- og uddannelsescentre, og fra det offentlige innovationssystem.
Dette er en lejlighed til at komme helt tæt på typologi og metodik for aktive brugere ud fra et innovationsperspektiv.
Læs mere om konferencen og tilmelding her: www.teknologisk.dk/k45882.
Besøg også projekt-sitet: www.next-practice.dk.
Hvordan manøvrerer små og mellemstore virksomheder bedst i forhold til at sikre et frugtbart udbytte af brugerdreven innovation? – Det handler bl.a. om at udvikle metoder til at forstå og kategorisere sine brugere. Det er hér Projektet Active User TypOlogies tager sit afsæt.
For at skabe den størst mulige værditilvækst må den enkelte virksomhed i dag integrere forskellige innovationstilgange og i højere grad end før mestre hele innovationslandskabet. Det overordnede mål med projektet Active User TypOlogies (herefter: AUTO) er derfor at bidrage til danske virksomheders konkurrenceevne ved at integrere brugerinddragelse i virksomhedernes innovationsproces.
Innovationsværktøjer til SMV’er
Konkret vil AUTO-projektet udvikle dels en typologi over aktive brugere og dels en metodik, der kan hjælpe virksomheder til at skabe bindeled mellem de aktive brugere og virksomhedens innovationsaktiviteter. Typologien og metodikken danner altså sammen et værktøj, virksomheder kan anvende i deres innovationsaktiviteter.
Projektleder Mette Abrahamsen, Teknologisk Institut, fortæller om udgangspunktet for AUTO-projektet: ”Evnen til at anvende teknologier innovativt skaber konkurrencefordele og sammenhængskraft i et videnbaseret samfund. Og når det gælder inddragelse af aktive forbrugere og brugere i en innovationsproces, er der et uudnyttet potentiale for mange danske virksomheder. Men hvis det potentiale skal udnyttes effektivt, kræver det et solidt kendskab til brugernes innovationstilgang.”
På vej mod ny viden
Besvarelserne fra en survey gennemført ved projektets opstart blandt ca. 3000 aktive brugere har ført til udarbejdelse af en typologi, der beskriver fire distinkte aktive brugertyper: Lead useren, den passionerede professionelle, den idérige bruger og kommentatoren. Disse typer har hver deres karakteristika, der gør dem relevante at inddrage på forskellige tidspunkter i innovationsprocessen. Læs mere om de fire brugertyper her.
I første halvår 2010 tester de deltagende virksomheder første version af typologien i praksis. Målet er, at de ved hjælp af typologien får lettere ved at identificere, hvilke aktive brugere det er relevant at inddrage hvornår. Typologien vil herefter blive evalueret og videreudviklet med afsæt i virksomhedernes erfaringer.
Typologi i åbent review
Sideløbende med virksomhedsprojekterne udvikles og kvalificeres typologien yderligere gennem et åbent review, hvor interesserede inviteres til at kommentere på, hvad projektteamet har fundet frem til. Herved opnår projektet praksisnær erfaring og viden om åbne innovationsformer fra ledende aktører på området.
Ud over det åbne review indhenter projektet inspiration til brugerinddragelse fra ind- og udland. Det sker dels via projektsitet her, hvor man kan deltage i debatten om aktive brugere, og dels via sparring med udenlandske virksomheder og uddannelsesinstitutioner, der har en anderledes tilgang til arbejdet med inddragelse af aktive brugere.
Perspektiver
Typologien og metodikken vil være værktøjer, virksomheder kan benytte til at løfte deres innovationsniveau i en tid, hvor virksomheder i højere og højere grad må udnytte interne såvel som eksterne ressourcer til at spotte og udvikle nye ideer. Nye tendenser og den teknologiske udvikling skaber muligheder og udfordringer, som den enkelte virksomhed står overfor. Her skal projektet medvirke til at accelerere og systematisere de mange danske SMV’ers kapacitets- og netværksopbygning gennem brugerinddragelse.
Deltagere
Det er Teknologisk Instituts Center for Idé & Vækst der er projektholder, men deltagerkredsen er bredt forankret med en række SMV’er, uddannelses- og kulturinstitutioner. Formålet med diversiteten er at opnå en bred indsigt i aktive brugertyper på tværs af brancher. En indsigt, der anvendes til at kvalificere brugerkarakteristika i typologien.
AUTO-projektet er finansieret af Erhvervs- og Byggestyrelsens Program for Brugerdreven Innovation. Det blev opstartet i maj 2009, og forventes afsluttet i december 2010.
Off hand, the passionate professional resembles the lead user in that his ideas also typically derive from within his professional scope. However, the passionate professional – as opposed to the lead user – tends to come up with ideas within a wide array of products and services.
More often than not, the passionate professional’s core professional competences outline his innovation track, whereas the fulfillment of own needs in relation to the use of innovations do not. The passionate professional’s ideas are, much like those of the lead user, characterized by primarily being based on further developments and improvements of existing products and services.
The passionate professional is driven by his – you guessed it - passion for developing – a passion rooted in his profession. He gets his inspiration from within the professional arena, where he seeks and gains knowledge to further work on his idea. Hence, the passionate professional may be found within the scope of an enterprise’s collaborators and competitors, and is likely to be motivated to enter into dialogue with the enterprise’s own passionate professionals, who are referred to as the passionate insiders. That, however, does not mean that the passionate professional necessarily only gets his ideas from within a narrow product or service area defined by his own needs or with own usage as a goal. Perhaps this explains why the passionate professional is not nearly as problem and result oriented as is the lead user. And the passionate professional typically does not make it all the way to commercializing their ideas, although they still score above average on this parameter in the survey .
The passionate professional works on instinct, which may be deciphered into a combination of both professional evaluation and motivational factors such as satisfaction: “It feels right”. The passionate professional tends to be less focused on whether the idea is brand new, or whether it is a need he himself has identified. The supposition is that the passionate professional is quite driven by the process of challenging and enhancing his professional skills, and that this is why the passionate professional gets his ideas from varying product and service areas. A common thread joining all these areas is the activation of professional competences in the innovation process. The passionate professional is dialogue oriented as long as the theme is professional discussions.
The passionate professional’s role in an SME innovation process
The enterprise aspiring to meet up with the passionate professional, may do so in professional networks. Due to this fact, it is obviously a good idea to let the enterprise’s own passionate insiders seek external passionate professionals in their own networks. The passionate professional’s strengths lie in the conceptual phases and the design phases, where he is truly able to get his hands dirty. The enterprise may facilitate this in forums of dialogue, where the enterprise poses specific innovation challenges. Not an open brainstorm on what might be interesting needs in the market, other active users are better at taking on this specific task. The passionate professional is likely to thrive when working on well-defined problems pointing to areas of technology or service concepts targeted by the enterprise.
The passionate professional favors collaborating with the likeminded, and is more likely to do so than the lead user. This is why it is a good idea to – not only let the enterprise’s passionate insiders seek out the passionate professionals – but also to participate actively in a dialogue, through which the satisfactory feeling of partaking in a collaborative innovation process is fulfilled. It is in the encounter with passionate professionals that an enterprise can meet users who work in depth, but also tend to get wrapped up in novel ideas and continue on from there. The passionate professional is not necessarily a loyal customer, but nonetheless valuable for the duration of time in which he is active in the innovation process.
Literature teaches us that lead users are often driven by annoyance toward distinct existing products.
One of the characteristics of the lead user is the ability to identify needs in the market before the majority of users do. Lead users themselves benefit from the products or concepts they develop. They are experts in their specific field, and use existing knowledge, techniques and products as the basis of their innovation activities involving early identification of novel user needs. Thus, the lead user typically innovates within a specific set of boundaries closely related to his professional sphere.
The lead user may be seen as something of a lonely rider in the innovation process, which may be due to the fact that the lead user is “ahead of his game” in the sense of having recognized needs before his peers do. In addition to this, the lead user does not necessarily seek the synergy and recognition obtainable through collaborative effort. Hence, the lead user may find it difficult to surpass obstacles which arise along the road to realize an idea.
The lead user in the innovation processes of SME’s
The challenge for small and medium sized enterprises is getting the lead user involved, since he tends to be quite self-reliant and not necessarily attentive when enterprises market themselves, whether that be at a fair, convention or online. Only when the lead user himself has reached a point where he wishes to incorporate others than the usual close network of colleagues and family does he involve others.
The lead user doesn’t waste time on small-talk, and is thus rarely attracted to open dialogue, unless it is extremely focused, intended to solve problems, find solutions, and become a meeting place for others with the same known need. The lead user is attracted to settings where he might hand over or share his ideas for solutions to the needs he has recognized.
The lead user may be attracted to enterprises through a professional targeting effort, oftentimes run by the enterprises’ professional peer network rather than by marketers. In involving lead users, it is particularly important, that the focus is less on a problem-oriented dialogue betwixt peers within a given field, where the enterprises’ professionals match the lead users in areas of focus, and more on making these professional peers available to the lead users as back-up advisors. The enterprise may also tap into networks and peer groups, where the lead users tend to be, especially if the wish is the continual monitoring of new needs in the market. The prerequisite for doing this, however, is that the enterprise has focused in on what it is, they’re after, i.e. within what areas the innovation is sought. The challenge is to identify the most important trends in the enterprise’s market. Trends are not ‘easy-bake’ ideas, but phenomena and clusters pointing in the direction of lead users.
In the enterprise’s innovation process, the lead user can help add value at any stage, particularly if the enterprise is determined to listen rather than talk – as in being on the receiving end of lead user ideas, rather than partaking in a joint idea development process. So a lead user can contribute in the conceptual and design phases, and if the enterprise makes the necessary resources available – like components, materials and knowledge – it becomes easier and more attractive for the lead user to work on developing his idea within a beneficial scope of the enterprise.
The data (in Danish)
The first numbers listed below represent the percentage of lead users for whom the corresponding statements hold true, whereas the number in parenthesis is the total for all active users who responded to our survey. 
*Please remember to cite Center for Ideas & Innovation/Idé & Vækst at the Danish Technological Institute as your source, should you wish to use this data in your own work or study.
Quite a few businesses have come to realize that user driven innovation is key to steering businesses into a healthy future. But how do businesses know which users may prove beneficial to the development team, and which are more prone to becoming time consuming black holes?
In essence, that is one of the key questions we set out to answer in this, our ActiveUserTopology project. As part of this ongoing project, we’ve conducted a survey asking 3555* active users about their habits, ideas and willingness to share.
In leaning on prior research studies of users, we assume that different types of users have different prerequisites for entering into innovation processes, and as such the value gained from their contributions to business innovation vary.
For the purposes of this blog entry, we’ll focus on the innovations by lead users defined in existing literature as the type of person who identifies a need in the market long before the majority of users do; the lead user himself uses and benefits from the developed product or concept. He is an expert in his field, and utilizes existing knowledge, techniques and products as a basis for innovation activities, including the early identification of a need in the market.
Though there are still many more results to interpret, here’s what we’ve learned thus far:
More often than average, the lead user is inspired through his profession, hence the lead users’ ideas are oftentimes developed at work and they tend to regard the workplace as provider of important structures for working with ideas.
What do you think? – Do you have experience in the field, either as an idea maker, taker or as a representative of businesses working with user driven innovation? – We would love your input, and feel free to share your thoughts in either Danish or English.
For more information on our survey, please refer to the file below (Danish version only).
*The percentage of completed surveys is 13,4.
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| Active User Typology ver. 1.0.pdf | 1.19 MB |
At the moment I'm struggling
At the moment I'm struggling with a corner of user driven innovation that you are not supposed to talk about, namely that some users are "black holes" (as you put it in a post) and take valuable time away from the ones that contribute in a useful way.
It's my experience that such users (and sometimes also the novice companies that want to look closer at user driven innovation) confuse the goal of UDI with that of a referendum or "users can tell the business what they want" (and then the business will do it). Such confusion ends up wasting project time and sending the business in an undesirable direction when it comes to product or process development. All because the are eager to engage with users and use their potential.
I don't know if this problem arises from a vague understanding of UDI as being a kind of controlled lab experiment where subjects need to be representative to the group. I know the same problem occurs in usability and user experience studies where experts are reluctant to send away incompetent users because they understand their work as a controlled lab experiment rather than an exploration.
This study looks really interesting and I will follow your reports closely.
just a remark for a start
I hope to see a lot of good and inspiring comments to enrich and bring the project onwards